White Baboon

(Iman & Suher, two employees at the center.)

You wanna know what’s really going on in Lebanon? So do I. It’s complicated. And as Michael and I discuss Hezbollah over hot and sour soup at Chopstix, or he goes over whos Sunni and who’s Shiite for me ONE more time as we eat turkey sandwiches, I start to think that “complicated” is not the right word and that the phrase “#@$*ing mess” is a a little more appropo. So I’ll just cover the refugees, Inma Foundation’s beneficiaries, for now. The Palestinians were run out their homeland by Israel after World War II. Some fled to Syria, others to Jordan or Saudi Arabia and several thousand landed here. Around 400,000 Palestinians live in 12 “camps” throughout Lebanon. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are not recognized as citizens, cannot acquire legal employment, cannot vote and are sometimes restricted from beautifying their homes (i.e. settling). Lebanese speculation suggests the following reasons: 1) Official acceptance—admitting that they’re here to stay–would remove one of Lebanon’s important bartering chips with Israel. 2) Since Palestinians are mostly Sunni, their proportional participation in parliament would lopside the current division of power between Shiites, Sunnis and Christians.But let’s be clear. I DON’T REALLY KNOW. Did you hear me? I don’t know. Because it’s impossible to get an opinion without bias here.So now, after sixty years, the Borj el Barajne refugee “camp” is not a collection of tents, but a rough, third-world neighborhood. Unprotected cables swing in every direction, children sell lottery tickets, birkas carry babies, garbage piles on the curb, smarmy service taxis carry six, a camel paces impatiently in front of an auto service station, a family of three with an area rug ride on a motorbike. In this square mile area, people sway, a little like rival gang members, in opposing political directions. Some favor Hamas, others Fatah and then there are Jihadists. That’s why the occasional fatal squabble occurs. Yet lucky for us, since we got lost here yesterday, it’s not dangerous. Taxis will still cheat you out of a buck or two when you’re new, but due to Muslim-inspired fear and the consequence of public shame, crime is low. In a disheveled, cracked nutshell, this is where I’m going a few times a week. To get to know these Palestinians. To search for website photos. To play with the kids. To learn my rudimentary Arabic. To understand.P.S. Head to Inma Foundation’s new website to learn, donate, browse photos and see how Michael’s style and technical talent and my content have created online presence for this NGO.